Vale David Tiley
David Tiley was one of the early generation of bloggers in Australia, starting in 2003, approximately the same time as I started. I first met...
Returning to blogging at Troppo
As longstanding readers will know, I was one of the founders of Troppo along with Nicholas Gruen and several others including Mark Bahnisch and Don...
The Fertility Rate: the Best Dam(n) Wellbeing Index Going Around?
Valiant attempts have been made to measure happiness and wellbeing. People much smarter than me have developed fancy indices, and people even smarter than that,...
The political economy of Medicare
I always say that political economy is the best (or least worst) lens through which to examine how health systems work. This goes for Medicare,...
Some thoughts on fixing the Australian health system
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Crikey on 3 June 2022. As I see it, the four most pressing...
Practical steps towards Ivan Illich’s world
[caption id="attachment_35644" align="alignleft" width="1163"] For anyone who’s interested I recommend David Cayley’s series of CBC radio documentaries on Illich. (He’s the best broadcaster I’ve come...
On Faust, Lord of the Rings, and lockdowns
A major theme in our book "the Great Covid Panic" (now also on Kindle!) is how a whole layer of politicians, medical advisers, and opportunistic...